Sweden and Ravelry

So our trip to Sweden is coming to a close (four more days!) but i think it has helped me organize myself in a lot of ways. In other ways it has made me realize that I don't always have to be organized. I have been doing some knitting but i wish i was doing more. Ravelry is a terrible things to become addicted to when you don't have access to your stash or any money to buy new yarns. i am itching to go through my stash and cast on for new projects. that being said i am also going to be quite dilligant with keeping up on my promise to have no more than two WIPs at a time (one hard and one easy) It is so inspiring to go through all of the pages and see everyones interpretations on different patterns. It is so exciting to me because this is a resource I have been craving for some time now. Every time I find a pattern online I want to make (which is quite often) I would Google and craftster it to see how other people felt about the pattern or see what yarns had been subbed. now with Ravelry I don't have to work anymore! It is also lovely to have such intimate (as intimate as the internet can be) contact with designers and yarn makers. When I found out that i could favorite a yarn company I just about freaked. I found this great company called Beaverslide Dry Goods. In all honesty I think I love the name of the company more than I could every love the yarn although it does look scrupseous. i think ill pick some up for Gretel by Ysolda when I decide to make it which will hopefully be as soon as possible.

I have been knitting a little bit. I bought some Drops Alpaca at the lovely knitting store in Lund Sweden for Endpaper Mitts but I soon realized I didnt like the stitch definition of the alpaca so I switched over to the vintage lace glove pattern. I love the way the pink ones have turned out and my only problem with them is that the pinky finger is a little tight on both hands. I have started on a pair of generic handwarmers for Zoe that I hope she likes. Actually I dont really care if she likes them or not I have to keep knitting so I dont get stressed about flying on Wednesday.

This was taken in a very unfinished and unblocked state. I just originally wrote unfished state which indeed they have been and will remain in an unfished state!

Its funny you start off a trip thinking you will be able to plan everything out and then literally nothing goes as you had thought. Its the same with knitting. None of the yarn I bought has matched the patterns I thought i would knit. I bought some Dale of Norway Falk for the Motorcycle Chica gloves but i hated the way the yarn knit up and I didnt care for the pattern too much either. I didnt find any amazing yarn stores in Europe though. Well actually that isnt entirely true the one is Lund is nice and so was the one in Zurich. I wish i had more money to indulge in local fibers but I suppose that will be one of my goals for when I return!

One of the nicest thing about this trip has been that i discovered I liked to cook which is something I hated before coming here. I always loved to bake but couldn't be bothered with cooking. I am still not very good but for the first time I have all sorts of dishes swirling about my brain waiting to be created. I made a tasty carrot soup for garett and mathilda this past week which knocked my socks off. Of course it would have been much nicer if it wasnt 80 degrees out but that is an entirely different story.

Hmm yummy. We bought the tastiest rosemary bread to go with it. Dont you just love that dish too. I have refused to eat out of any other bowl since ive been here. I was secretly hoping someone would just give it to me! I kid!

I hope I will be able to knit far more this semester than I was able to last semester. My course load will be lighter i think and I have a movie class which I think I will be able to do mindless knitting in which to me is like heaven. Watching classic movies for school and knitting is almost as good as knitting during downtime at work.

I will hopefully be blogging more since Ravelry will be forcing me to take pictures of my work and actually post online so why not write a post or two. I always end up deleting the ones I write which is kind of stupid I know

Well I'll leave you with a little picture of the beach at Malmo we went swimming at on Monday.


Happy Crafting my sweets!